Todd C. Callies, a 41-year-old White male from Evansville, Wyoming, was shot outside Taylor’s Sports Bar around midnight on July 25, 2013, after what began as a night out turned into a burst of violence in the parking lot. Reports on the case say he and others were leaving the bar when they encountered 21-year-old Samuel Renner, who had returned armed after an earlier confrontation inside or around the bar.
Investigators later said Renner came back with two guns, including one fitted with a laser, and began pointing a weapon at people outside. In the confusion that followed, Callies and others tried to stop him, and during the struggle shots were fired. Callies was struck in the upper chest and taken to Wyoming Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead. Public obituary records identify him as having died that day in Evansville at age 41.
What happened next moved quickly. Renner was arrested and brought into Natrona County Circuit Court the next day. Early reporting described him as facing a murder charge along with numerous additional felony counts tied to the gunfire that endangered others in the parking lot. Prosecutors later announced they would not seek the death penalty, but the case remained severe because authorities believed the shooting did not end with Callies alone; the charging documents also reflected accusations that others had been threatened or targeted during the same eruption of gunfire. The picture that emerged from investigators was not of a random shooting, but of a man returning to the bar after a fight, armed and dangerous, and a victim who was killed in the desperate attempt to keep the situation from getting worse.
By January 2014, instead of taking the case to trial, Renner pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and 10 other felonies stemming from the shooting. In May 2014, a Natrona County judge sentenced him to 60 years to life in prison. Accounts of the sentencing say the punishment covered second-degree murder, attempted second-degree murder, seven counts of aggravated assault and battery, and two counts of possessing a deadly weapon with unlawful intent. That left the case with one identified suspect and one convicted killer, and it closed the central question of who shot Todd Callies, even if it could not soften the violence of the scene or the loss to his family. Later reporting also noted that Renner pursued challenges related to whether his attorneys had properly considered mental health issues in his defense, showing that the legal aftermath continued well beyond the night of the shooting, but the conviction and sentence for Callies’ killing remained the defining outcome of the case.
